Isn't it weird that if you try to correct the child's beliefs with reality and science, you can get into trouble legally and morally, and yet if you started teaching the child counter-nonsense (the evil Lord Xeno and his soul thetons) and claimed it was your religious beliefs, you would have the same protection as the parent? That religious force field works both ways, yet science seems to lack the same government protection. Give him a child's science book and let his brain do its own self-corrections.

"Ain't got no last words to say, yellow streak right up my spine. The gun in my mouth was real and the taste blew my mind."

"We see you cry. We turn your head. Then we slap your face. We see you try. We see you fail. Some things never change."

Although your sister is a Christian, does she buy into Young Earth Creationism? Many don't so I was just wondering what her stance is on this. Obviously if she doesn't then speaking to her about it first and then addressing the subject with him is fine. However regardless of her stance, I empathise with your frustration. It's very hard not to say something when one knows that a child is being taught nonsense. At the end of the day, sometimes it's better to pick your battles though rather than alienating loved ones. Still, very frustrating so I get how torn you must feel. It must be confusing for the children who are effectively victims in this kind of thing by them being told one thing, then the other, one would think it's the responsibility of the education system to stamp out irresponsible teaching. Any school that teaches that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old in a science class does not deserve to be called a school.

Talk to your sister is the best advice I have. Hopefully she'll appreciate that you decided to be in the open with it. Tell her you value your relationship with her and her child and want to be a part of their lives. Be upfront with how you handled the 7000 year old earth question. Tell her how despite your contrary beliefs, you tried to respect hers. Tell her how you won't interfere with the belief but if the really really nutty stuff comes up, you will want to address it in a delicate manner. The Magic of Reality might be good to have on your coffee table if they come to visit or perhaps the sandwalk adventures.

I will do the best I can with this topic. She can be very opinionated, . . . even in the face of documented scientific evidence for "things VERY old". All the YEC has for it is . . . . . . a book. YEC pseudo-'science' is constantly shown why it is flawed by actual scientists in their field of study. So YEC is preached as an indoctrination for no other reason but to promote a religion, not truth. If the topic comes up again [with my sister], this is kind of where I will go in the discussion. Experiments [and those repeated by others to check the results] offer truth. Results have no agenda. They just are.

Be prepared for a few of the standard YEC "that science crap is wrong" canned responses:

1. Carbon Dating is wildly inaccurate.

Science initially began dating with carbon isotopes, but since then they've moved on to a whole bunch of other isotopes that are even more reliable, and they cross reference them all. They also use things like ice cores, tree rings, coral reef growth, and other natural timelines, and compare all these with the radiometric dating, and all of them give the same accurate reading.

2. Things aged differently. Just because a tree grows 1 ring every year today doesn't mean that it couldn't have grown 1 ring every day in the past. Just because an isotope has a specific half life today doesn't mean that it didn't have a different half life in the past.

That's just crap. Pure and simple. One nutjob "scientist" proposed this and a bunch of YEC pseudoscientists jumped all over it and used it to explain why science is wrong and YEC is right. No respectable scientist in any field supports any of this junk while literally millions of respectable scientists use these dating methods, test these dating methods, and confirm their accuracy all the time. Literally all the time. In fact, there are more "scientists" who truly claim to have scientific evidence that Bigfoot is running around somewhere in Montana than there are scientists who claim to have scientific evidence that radiometric (et al) dating is wrong.

3. You weren't there 14.7 billion years ago, or 4.5 billion years ago, how can you know what happened?

Correct. And you weren't there 6,000 years ago so how can you know what happened. In fact, there are mountains of evidence (figuratively and literally) for the 4.5 billions years of earth's existence, and only 1 book that says 6,000 years and even still, most people who read that book will tell you that it doesn't say 6,000 years - most Jews, Catholics, and other Christians, even scholars in the various theologies, will tell you that the timelines are allegorical and the earth is much, much older than 6,000 years, probably even billions of years, which fits right in with what scientists will say.

My favorite response to all YEC arguments is this:

In fact, it's only a relatively small percentage of YEC Christians who argue against those mountains of evidence based only on the Bible - and even they say that much of the Bible is filled with parables and most of it needs to be interpreted, so why is this small percentage of Christians so determined to take Genesis, the least accurate, least realistic book of the entire Bible, as the only one that must be taken literally?

I have never gotten an even remotely sensible answer to that question, and I have derailed several YEC believers with it - by derailed I mean they changed their viewpoint to at least accept that Genesis could be one giant fable to crunch billions of years into a simplistic bronze age book and describe creation in terms that bronze age man could grasp.

(which also creates a crack in the whole damn dam of Christianity - if it's all a big parable, then Adam and Eve is a parable, if that's a parable, then the forbidden fruit is a parable, if that's a parable, then there is no Original Sin, if there is no original sin, there is no need for salvation, if there's no need for salvation, there is no need for Jesus; a much longer debate indeed, but once the first domino is down, the rest can be made to fall, over time)

"Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly." - Robert A. Heinlein

(02-01-2013 10:45 AM)Aseptic Skeptic Wrote: (which also creates a crack in the whole damn dam of Christianity - if it's all a big parable, then Adam and Eve is a parable, if that's a parable, then the forbidden fruit is a parable, if that's a parable, then there is no Original Sin, if there is no original sin, there is no need for salvation, if there's no need for salvation, there is no need for Jesus; a much longer debate indeed, but once the first domino is down, the rest can be made to fall, over time)

Unless, of course, God created sin - God created man to be imperfect - God created man to sin; thus, eliminating the misconception of an original sin, which in turn, aligns the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God.

(02-01-2013 10:45 AM)Aseptic Skeptic Wrote: (which also creates a crack in the whole damn dam of Christianity - if it's all a big parable, then Adam and Eve is a parable, if that's a parable, then the forbidden fruit is a parable, if that's a parable, then there is no Original Sin, if there is no original sin, there is no need for salvation, if there's no need for salvation, there is no need for Jesus; a much longer debate indeed, but once the first domino is down, the rest can be made to fall, over time)

Unless, of course, God created sin - God created man to be imperfect - God created man to sin; thus, eliminating the misconception of an original sin, which in turn, aligns the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God.

Of course, that goes without saying. Even if Genesis is 100% literal, then Omni-perfect god put that stupid tree in the garden knowing exactly what Adam and Eve were going to do. He could have put it at the North Pole (need more than a fig leaf to wander up there to break the rule) or on Mars or across the galaxy or just not put a dumb tree anywhere. But he put it right there, in arm's reach, fully planning to roast almost all of us in hell for eternity because of that tree. Of course it was part of god's insane psychotic plan.

I submit that any omni-marvelous being capable of actually creating a universe would neither be this petty, this insane, nor this clueless. If all he wanted to do was roast his little ant colony of souls, there's easier ways. If all he wanted to do was weed out the truly faithful butt-kissing souls to share his home in heaven, his omniscience was all he needed for that, no need to create Earth and sin and all this junk. If all he wanted to do was, well, be insane, I doubt he could have created such an orderly universe. The perfect combination of omniscience, omnipotence, insanity, cruelty, and attention to detail necessary for such a being to exist, create all this junk, and still have these sadistic crazy rules about sin and salvation seems to me to be even less probable than a random big bang and a bunch of random cosmic events, abiogenesis, and some seemingly random evolution since then. And we still only have evidence for one of those two improbable things.

"Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly." - Robert A. Heinlein

(02-01-2013 12:52 PM)kingschosen Wrote: Unless, of course, God created sin - God created man to be imperfect - God created man to sin; thus, eliminating the misconception of an original sin, which in turn, aligns the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God.

(02-01-2013 12:52 PM)kingschosen Wrote: Unless, of course, God created sin - God created man to be imperfect - God created man to sin; thus, eliminating the misconception of an original sin, which in turn, aligns the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God.